WO1 Andy Peat spent 35 minutes trying to save the critically injured man and helping others to safety after his unit was caught in a compound surrounded by booby-traps.

WO1 Peat, of the Royal Logistic Corps, was fighting to save the Danish special forces soldier when he found he and his comrades were surrounded by six other improvised explosive devices (IED), including one under the wounded man.

The married father of one has now been recognised by Denmark for his actions during the raid on a Taliban bomb-making factory in Helmand province.

WO1 Peat, who is 39 and was on his fourth tour in Afghanistan, was one of two British soldiers working with Danish and Afghan forces during the raid in the Upper Gereshk Valley in January.

He said: “I would definitely class it as being in the wrong place at the wrong time and I wouldn’t say it was a run-of-the-mill IED predicament. But many of our operators are facing the same sort of dramas on a regular basis in Afghanistan and other places.”

The joint force was raiding a compound where Taliban bomb makers had hidden hundreds of pounds of homemade explosives.

While the team searched the compound, Sgt Rene Brink Jakobsen detonated a bomb when he knelt down on the rooftop, leaving him with terrible injuries.

WO1 Peat was only 5 yards away and took charge as he and others applied tourniquets and got ready to evacuate the wounded man. As they prepared to get him off the roof, he realised the area was riddled with other bombs, including another one under Sgt Jakobsen.

He said: “The bomb had blown him into a wall and he bounced off that wall onto another device.

“There was a bit of disturbed earth and I saw the wire and I said: ‘I think Rene is on something, we need to stay still’.”

He dug under the wounded man to disable the bomb, but they could still not get him off the 14ft high roof because another bomb blocked their route. WO1 Peat lay down to shield the bomb with his body so that no one could accidentally kick it as they took him away.

WO1 Peat, from Edinburgh, said everyone had remained calm throughout.

“I said: ‘If we don’t mess with these things we are safe. Take your time, get it right and get off the roof.’”

“Everybody knew what needed to be done.”

After Sgt Jakobsen was evacuated, WO1 Peat cleared a path for the other Danes to get off the roof and then had to lead five Afghan policemen to safety after realising they too were within inches of a bomb.

“Had I not had a great bunch of lads on that roof that night, the outcome might have been very different,” he said.

Sgt Jakobsen, also 39, died of his wounds leaving a widow and three children.

WO1 Peat has now become the first non Danish soldier to be presented Denmark’s Anders Lassen Award.

His citation for the award, which commemorates a Victoria Cross winning Danish solider from the Second World War, praised his “extraordinary courage and determined actions”.

The award was presented by Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik at the Royal Danish Military College in Copenhagen.